cp's OEIS Frontend

Two circles are either disjoint or meet in two points. Tangential contacts are not allowed. A point belongs to exactly one or two circles. Three circles may not meet at a point. The circles may have different radii.

This is in the affine plane, rather than the projective plane.

Two arrangements are considered the same if one can be continuously changed to the other while keeping all circles circular (although the radii may be continuously changed), without changing the multiplicity of intersection points, and without a circle passing through an intersection point. Turning the whole configuration over is allowed.

Several variations are possible:

- straight lines instead of circles (see A241600).

- straight lines in general position (see A090338).

- curved lines in general position (see A090339).

- allow circles to meet tangentially but without multiple intersection points (begins 1, 5, ...); more terms are needed.

- again use circles, but allow multiple intersection points (also begins 1, 5, ...); more terms are needed.

- use ellipses rather than circles.

- a question from Walter D. Wallis: what if the circles must all have the same radius?

a(1)-a(5) computed by Jon Wild.

a(n) >= A000081(n+1) - Benoit Jubin, Dec 21 2014. More precisely, there are A000081(n+1) ways to arrange n circles if no two of them meet. - N. J. A. Sloane, May 16 2017

From Daniel Forgues, Aug 08-09 2015: (Start)

A representation for the diagrams in a250001.jpg (in the same order):

a(1) = 1: {{2}};

a(2) = 3: {{2, 3}, {2, 4}, {4, 6}};

a(3) = 14: {{2, 4, 8}, {2, 3, 6}, {2, 3, 4}, {2, 3, 5}, {4, 6, 5},

{4, 6, 15}, {2, 6, 9}, {4, 6, 12}, {2, 8, 12}, {30, 42, 70},

{?, ?, ?}, {?, ?, ?}, {15, 21, 35}, {?, ?, ?}}.

In lexicographic order:

a(3) = 14: {{2, 3, 4}, {2, 3, 5}, {2, 3, 6}, {2, 4, 8}, {2, 6, 9},

{2, 8, 12}, {4, 6, 5}, {4, 6, 12}, {4, 6, 15}, {15, 21, 35},

{30, 42, 70}, {?, ?, ?}, {?, ?, ?}, {?, ?, ?}}.

The smallest integers greater than 1 are used for the representation:

(p_1)^(a_1)*...*(p_m)^(a_m), where

0 <= a_i <= n, for 1 <= i <= m;

(a_1)+...+(a_m) > 0.

Could the Venn diagram interpretation (of the k-wise, 1 <= k <= n, common divisors of k numbers from each subset) reveal a pattern?

Does this representation work for more complex diagrams? (End)

Once you get to n=5, geometric concerns mean that not all topologically-conceivable arrangements are actually circle-drawable. My program enumerated 16977 conceivable arrangements of 5 pseudo-circles, and Christopher Jones and I together have figured out how to show that 26 of these arrangements are not actually circle-drawable. So it seems that a(5) = 16951. This entry will be updated soon, and there will be a new sequence for the number of topologically-conceivable arrangements. - Jon Wild, Aug 25 2016 [The counts in this comment were amended by Jon Wild on Aug 30 2016. I apologize for taking so long to make the corrections here. - N. J. A. Sloane, Jun 11 2017]

a(n) <= 7*13^(binomial(n,3) + binomial(n,2) + 3n - 1) is a (loose) upper bound, see Reddit link. I believe XkF21WNJ's reply shaves off a factor of 13^3 from this bound for all n > 1. - Linus Hamilton, Apr 14 2019

A good upper bound for a(6) is given in sequence A288559, which counts the arrangements of pseudo-circles, i.e. the topologically conceivable arrangements mentioned above, which are not all necessarily realizable with true circles. The number of arrangements of 6 pseudo-circles was found by Andrii Shportko and Jon Wild to be 17,552,169. - Jon Wild, Jun 03 2025

In A288559, a(5) included 26 non-circularizable pseudocircle arrangements, which generated in turn 132,546 6-pseudocircle descendants. These descendants must be excluded from A250001, which means that a tighter upper bound for A250001(6) is 17,419,623. - Andrii Shportko, Jun 06 2025

This is in the affine plane, rather than the projective plane, so two lines are either parallel or meet in one point.

Here we only consider arrangements of n lines in "general position", with every two lines meeting in one point and every intersection point lying on exactly two lines. See A241600 for the general case.

Two arrangements are considered the same if the lines in each arrangement can be numbered from 1 to n in such a way that, on each line, the order of crossings with the other lines is the same in the two arrangements. In particular, turning over the whole arrangement is allowed. (This does not imply that one arrangement can be continuously changed to the other (possibly after turning over) while keeping all lines straight, without changing the multiplicity of intersection points, and without a line passing through an intersection point, see the papers by Suvorov, Jaggi et al., Richter-Gebert, and Tsukamoto.)

Old name was "Number of full n-flups". The full n-flups are the topologically distinct planar configurations of n straight lines such that each line crosses each other line at exactly one intersection point and no two intersection points coincide.

Also, the number of distinct ways to divide a pancake with n straight cuts that result in the maximal number of pieces (see A000124, A000125).

A straightedge-and-compass construction starts with 2 points marked on the plane, traditionally (0,0) and (1,0). One can use a straightedge to draw a line between two marked points or a compass to draw a circle centered at a marked point through another marked point. New points occur at the intersections of lines or circles with lines or circles.

In this sequence, two constructions are considered the same if you can rotate, reflect, or translate one to get the other.